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Tuesday, June 07, 2005 ( 6/07/2005 03:35:00 PM ) Bill S. "GUT-SHOT ROCK 'N' ROLL" – So I'm listening to the new Go-Betweens album (highly laudatory review to ultimately follow), and I'm playing "Darlinghurst Nights" and puzzling over what sounds to me like a lyrical reference to Frank Peretti. Why would these guys sing about a crappy hack religio-horror novelist? I wonder, but, then, I read the lyrics booklet and realize instead that Forster & McClennan are really singing about Aussie rock writer and musician Frank Brunetti. So never mind. . . # | Monday, June 06, 2005 ( 6/06/2005 11:25:00 AM ) Bill S. MAN-O-MAN-O-MANOS – For those who've periodically pondered the indescribable moviegoing experience that is Manos: The Hands of Fate (like: what the hell were they thinking, anyway?), the June 10, 2005, issue of Entertainment Weekly is well worth latching onto. Dalton Ross' "The Worst Movie Ever Made" backtracks to 1966, that fateful year when not-so-humble El Paso fertilizer salesman Hal Warren decided that he could make a movie just as well as anyone in Hollywood. Turns out Hal was wrong, of course, but for those of us who discovered this once obscure Tarnished Turkey on MST3K and wondered where the hell it came from, Ross has the sordid goods. According to his article, filming of this ramshackle low-rent feature was characterized by tons of improvisation plus a hefty amount of sixties excess. To the surprise of no one who's actually seen his performance, it appears that John Reynolds, the actor who played deformed manservant Torgo, was stoned through most of the shooting. Only cast members to get paid for their performances were the actress who played the little girl Debbie (the lucky girl got a shiny red bicycle) and the German Shepherd who appears menacingly throughout the flick (and was fed for his thespian efforts). This weekend, I happened to catch a documentary on Trio based on Peter Biskind's history of American moviemaking in the sixties & seventies, Easy Riders/Raging Bulls, and 'round about the time that the subject directors' egos started getting out of control from excess fame-&-druggery, I began viewing Manos' writer/director in a slightly different light. Sure, the movie's awful, but its badness is honestly earned and utterly removed from the least bit of artistic pretension. When you get down to it, I'd rather watch a cheesy li'l Texas drive-in picture one more time than to have to sit through a 2nd showing of New York, New York. . . # | Saturday, June 04, 2005 ( 6/04/2005 02:10:00 PM ) Bill S. "SOMETIMES, THE MOMENT IS NOT WHAT YOU NEED" – That phew! sound you heard was me finishing the twelfth volume of Takami & Taguchi's Battle Royale, the newest translated entry in Tokyopop's manga series. The book primarily focuses on an extended battle-to-the-death between good guy athlete Sugimura and the psychotically implacable Kiriyama. Visceral and ultra-vicious, the fight also has the most impact of any in this body count series simply because its protagonist is someone we've gotten to know over the previous entries – as opposed to being quickly introed just to be dispatched a few pages later. Who'd have thought that such a splattery story could so effectively make you feel bad this late in the game? Three more volumes to go, and I'm dreading/anticipating 'em all. That's good, nasty comix storytelling. . . # | ( 6/04/2005 11:15:00 AM ) Bill S. A QUICK SECOND THOT ON SIDNEY SHORR - My recollection about the 1981 Tony Randall sitcom, Love, Sidney, was adjusted this a.m. when I took a quick trip to TV Tome and read the site’s summary. The show, which featured Randall as a lonely artist who befriends a soap opera actress (the ever-wonderful Swoosie Kurtz) and her daughter, never explicitly indicated that Sidney was gay, though the successful TV-movie which inspired and preceded it (Sidney Shorr: A Girl's Best Friend) made no bones about the character's sexual orientation. (Apparently, back then, what was considered acceptable in a TV-movie was less so once you transfered the character to a 30-minute sitcom.) In first remembering the series last night, though, I recalled Sidney's gayness as an integral part of both the movie and series. Which only goes to show how time can dampen the effects of corporate cowardice. . . # | ( 6/04/2005 06:59:00 AM ) Bill S. IN PRAISE OF "ECCENTRIC UNCLES" – As part of Gay Pride Month, TVLand is airing "Tickled Pink," a tribute to openly & ambiguously gay & lesbian series leads, coded characters and alternative icons from television history, with some of the usual poofter suspects (two of the Queer Eye guys, Bruce Villanch, Frank de Caro – I miss his fey film quip segments on The Daily Show – etc.) offering their own wry takes on the topic. An amusingly lightweight hour, but no Celluloid Closet. My favorite moment was a salute to the glory that was Paul Lynde. But if you're gonna mention Tony Randall's Felix Unger as a figure young gay audience members identified with, where's his lead on the 80's Love, Sidney? And, for that matter, where was Billy Crystal's Jodie Dallas? # | Thursday, June 02, 2005 ( 6/02/2005 04:19:00 PM ) Bill S. "BEEN HOPIN' THAT YOU'D DROP IN" – It's June, so what better time to watch a holiday comedy on cable? We caught a showing of the Will Ferrell vehicle Elf the other night: a sweetly silly, if overly slapdash, flick, though Ferrell's largely one-note performance grew wearisome by the end. (Perhaps if they'd given us one more scene like the one where he and Zooey Deschanel sing "Baby, It's Cold Outside," I'd have been more tolerant of Buddy the Elf's grating childishness.) Where the movie most falls down are in its unbelievable antagonists, though: James Caan's curmudgeonly children's book editor (who signals his heartlessness by improbably okaying the shipment of the company's big Christmas release even though the last two pages are missing) and the left field addition in the film's last act of Central Park mounted police as an imposing menace. (Perhaps you need to be a New Yawker to get that last 'un.) Decent use of comic actors like Andy Richter and Amy Sedaris in smaller roles, tho – and the movie's mandatory non-p.c. scene featuring the pugnacious dwarf writer Miles Finch provided the movie's biggest laff. I'll also personally cherish any opportunity to see Bob Newhart in something new these days. Even if he has been diminished by elvish special FX, the man remains a comedy giant. I, too, see from IMDB that Ray Harryhausen provided a voice for one of the movie's stop motion creatures. Okay, that's pretty cool. # | |
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